{"id":4902,"date":"2026-07-31T03:10:30","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T03:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/?p=4902"},"modified":"2026-07-31T03:10:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T03:10:32","slug":"uncondemned-caring-for-the-children-growing-up-in-kenyan-prisons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/?p=4902","title":{"rendered":"Uncondemned: caring for the children growing up in Kenyan prisons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Stories from the community<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/?p=4867\" title=\"What are maternal health inequalities, and how are we stopping them?\">Maternal<\/a> and child health<br \/>\nUncondemned: caring for the children growing up in Kenyan prisons<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>29  July  2026<\/b><\/li>\n<li>5<br \/>\n min read<\/li>\n<li><b>by<\/b>Gitonga Njeru<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Baby beds inside a women&#8217;s prison cell. Credit: Dept of Correctional Services<\/p>\n<h4>At a glance<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>At any time, about 300 children under age four are living with their incarcerated mothers in Kenyan prisons.<\/li>\n<li>In the past, those children risked missing out on the immunisations that are, if anything, more critical in those crowded and often unsanitary conditions, because getting vaccinated required a medical excursion to a clinic beyond the walls.<\/li>\n<li>That\u2019s changing, as Kenya invests more in mainstreaming maternal and child <a href=\"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/?p=4870\" title=\"The Promise and Limits of AI in Mental Healthcare\">healthcare<\/a> within prisons, and making sure facilities are equipped to deliver childhood vaccines.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Under Kenyan law, mothers serving custodial sentences are permitted to keep their children with them until\u00a0age four. About\u00a0300 children are living with their mothers in Kenyan prisons, down from about 600 in the run-up to the COVID-19 pandemic, which thinned out incarcerated populations generally.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Prison is a challenging place to raise a child in good health. According to a 2023\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cicmn.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/CICs-Kenya-Report-10-30-23-FINAL.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">report<\/a> on Kenyan prison nurseries compiled by the US-based Children of Incarcerated Caregivers network, respiratory infections circulate frequently and soap in cells is often short. According to a 2016 research paper, only about half of Kenyan children living with their incarcerated mothers received <a href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/313729640_Feeding_Practices_of_Children_Aged_0-59_Months_Accompanying_Incarcerated_Mothers_in_Selected_Women&amp;apos;s_Prisons_in_Kenya\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">acceptable levels of nutrition<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In these conditions, vaccination is critical.\u00a0\u201cA single unvaccinated child can increase the risk of disease transmission in a crowded prison setting,\u201d said Dr Francis Mungai, an epidemiologist and former Kenya Prisons Service health expert. \u201cBefore on-site immunisation services, logistical challenges sometimes caused children to miss scheduled doses.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As recently as eight years ago, getting penitentiary-dwelling children immunised typically required what veterans of the system described in interviews as \u201cmedical safaris\u201d \u2013 scheduled trips outside prison walls.\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/principal-secretary-salome-beacco-muhia-inspecting-facilities-prison.jpg\" alt=\"Principal Secretary Salome Beacco Muhia inspecting the facilities for the toddlers in the cell. Credit: Dept of Correctional Services\"><figcaption>Principal Secretary Salome Beacco Muhia inspecting the facilities for the toddlers in a prison cell. Credit: Dept of Correctional Services<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Excursions like these were vulnerable to cancellation, being subject to transport availability, security requirements and competing priorities.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s changing. \u201cHealth services have greatly improved in Kenyan prisons,\u201d Mungai said. Two of the country\u2019s largest women\u2019s facilities serve as examples.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Nairobi\u2019s Lang\u2019ata Women\u2019s Prison, Kenya\u2019s only maximum security facility for female offenders, has a maternal and child health clinic within the walls, and Mombasa\u2019s Shimo La Tewa Women\u2019s Prison\u2019s on-site clinic is listed in the Ministry of Health\u2019s official facility registry as a level 3 government-run clinic. Both are operated in partnership between the Ministry of Health and the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cicmn.org\/prison-nursery-project\/global-prison-nursery-network\/global-prison-nursery-network-partners\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kenya Prisons Service<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy integrating [these children] into routine health services, we are protecting both their health and the wider community,\u201d says Elizabeth Ndunge, a <a href=\"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/?p=4850\" title=\"Opinion: Data disruptions put powerful maternal and child health tool at risk | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health\">public health<\/a> consultant who has worked on imprisoned populations<\/p>\n<h3>Mainstreaming healthcare for kids behind bars\u00a0<\/h3>\n<p>The improvement isn\u2019t incidental. Four years ago, the Kenya Prisons Service, working with the Ministry of Interior and partly funded by the Africa Early Childhood Network, launched a national\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.parliament.go.ke\/sites\/default\/files\/2023-08\/Hansard%20Report%20-%20Wednesday%2C%202nd%20August%202023%20%28P%29.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">policy<\/a> on the care of children of incarcerated mothers. This was the first framework of its kind in Kenya.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Among its provisions were guaranteed access to health services for pregnant and nursing mothers and their infants, 24 hours a day.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The policy also calls for standardised psychosocial support, nutrition programmes, and reintegration planning for children leaving custody with or without their mothers<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur primary objective was to eliminate the physical and logistical barriers that brought vaccination challenges such as shortage of transport outside the facility,\u201c said Dr Ndunge, who consulted on institutional healthcare reforms<\/p>\n<p>Every child born or admitted to the facilities is now entered into the Ministry of Health\u2019s electronic system, the Kenya Health Information System (KHIS), and is issued a Mother-and-Child Health booklet \u2013 the same record used for children outside of prison<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy treating the prison nursery\u00a0as a formal community health outreach site, the Ministry of Health has been able to absorb these children into KHIS,\u201c Ndunge said.\u00a0\u201cTheir vaccination milestones are tracked with the exact same rigour as a child visiting a premier public hospital,\u201d she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/josephine-with-her-daughter.jpg\" alt=\"Josephine with her daughter. Credit: Gitonga Njeru\"><figcaption>Josephine Katuve, pictured here with her daughter, has since been released. Credit: Gitonga Njeru<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Dr Irene Gacheri, a forensic nurse and assistant professor at Aga Khan University who has worked at both Lang\u2019ata and Shimo La Tewa two facilities, reflected on the change of the last several years<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn previous years, keeping track of default rates was an administrative nightmare because we relied entirely on external escorts to take mothers to outside dispensaries,\u201d Gacheri said.\u00a0Parental refusal has never been the issue inside the prison walls \u2013 logistics were<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow, with a dedicated vaccine schedule and cold chain infrastructure inside the facilities, we run immunisations every Thursday. The mothers are right here, the babies are right here,\u201d Gacheri added<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t just vaccinate \u2013 we also provide nutrition monitoring and vitamin A supplementation,\u201d she said<\/p>\n<h3>Fragile start<\/h3>\n<p>Josephine Katuve\u2019s now four-year-old daughter received most of her routine vaccines at Lang\u2019ata clinic while she served a one-year sentence related to bank fraud.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I was first remanded, my biggest fear wasn\u2019t my sentence, it was the health of my daughter,\u201d Katuve said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe nurses were attentive. They explained the vaccine timeline clearly and made sure\u00a0she received her shots right on time,\u201d she told VaccinesWork<\/p>\n<p>Katuve, who has since been released, said prison health staff were also on the lookout for any potential outbreak risk within the shared living quarters<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe easy thing is that my daughter\u2019s records were\u00a0transferred after my release into the mainstream health services. These extended records help [me keep up] with booster shots for my child,\u201d said Katuve<\/p>\n<h3>Protection on the inside<\/h3>\n<p>Mary Muthoni, Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Health, described the model as a collaboration across three institutions.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Kenya Prisons Service provides the secure environment and logistics while the Ministry of Health supplies the vaccines and clinical oversight, and civil society bridges reuthoni said. An example is the Faraja Foundation, which built Kenya\u2019s first in-prison nursery centre at Lang\u2019ata in 2013<\/p>\n<p>She added that the Ministry is pushing for a permanent, ring-fenced budget line for institutional paediatric care<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/health-ps-mary-muthoni-nairobi-event-MOH.jpg\" alt=\"Mary Muthoni, Principal Secretary, Kenya Ministry of Health\"><figcaption>Mary Muthoni, Principal Secretary, Kenya Ministry of Health<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The Principal Secretary of the State Department for Correctional Services in the Interior Ministry, Salome Beacco, confirms the plan to shore up paediatric health services across all of Kenya\u2019s women\u2019s correctional facilities. \u201cThe Ministry\u2019s position is that Lang\u2019ata and Shimo la Tewa Maternal and Child Health clinics are our pilot model. The results from these two institutions have guided our phased national roll-out.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe infrastructure upgrades across all the women\u2019s correctional facilities and one female probation hostel will be done in phases of Financial Year 2026\/2027,\u201d she said<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the message is equity: \u201cEvery child has a constitutionally protected right to quality healthcare regardless of where they are born or raised,\u201d Beacco said<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stories from the community Maternal and child health Uncondemned: caring for the children growing up in Kenyan prisons<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[112,63,541,542,540],"class_list":["post-4902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-parenting","tag-caring","tag-children","tag-growing","tag-kenyan","tag-uncondemned"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4902"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4906,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4902\/revisions\/4906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}